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Though four-day workweeks are getting a lot of attention, will shorter workdays really be more effective?
Some businesses are considering revamping the traditional workweek in an effort to boost employee health and productivity during the pandemic. Everyone seems to be talking about how great it would be to have a four-day workweek. While three-day weekends are great, cutting five days of work into four can be really difficult for both employees and employers. But there could be other options.
The workweek could be reduced, according to certain organizational psychologists. A more workable answer for more kinds of enterprises and a huge boon to workers’ lives could be to wrap up in less time, perhaps six hours instead of eight. An author named Celeste Headlee says, “There are businesses that do need to make themselves available five days a week.” Headlee is the author of Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving. “It might be more practical and easy for those companies to cut the workday short.”
According to Headlee, “the idea of the eight-hour day is so ingrained in industrialised society,” thus a shorter workday may sound idealistic in theory. Still, a shorter workweek connected to better employee health and, maybe, more output has strong supporting evidence. Contrary to long-held beliefs, it’s possible that workers might be more productive and focused if they left the office earlier.
“Prioritization benefits from it.”
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant of Penn’s Wharton School says that eight-hour workdays are the norm in many fields and are difficult to change. There is such a thing as status-quo prejudice. The default that most people grow up with is frequently taken for granted. The people they knew all worked eight-hour days, five days a week. He goes on to say that it looks inevitable.
The lack of change, he says, is due to a “failure of imagination” on the side of employers, who also contribute to maintaining this weekday arrangement. The nice and easy way to measure people’s performance is to keep track of the hours they work and presume that more is better rather than actually measuring their results. It’s necessary to dispel such an assumption.
The world’s second- and seventh-most productive countries, Norway and Denmark, have workweeks that are less than 40 hours.
Even Headlee acknowledges that the standard eight-hour workday is inefficient. “Cognitively, we really only have a limited amount of focus time per day,” she explains. Attempting to train your brain to concentrate outside of that window will lead to exhaustion and declining returns. More mistakes, less creativity, and things left out are what you can expect. And that reduces your productivity.
In fact, research shows that working longer hours does not always lead to more productivity. According to studies conducted at Stanford University, there is a ceiling on production; after approximately 48 hours, output starts to decline dramatically. Some experts even go as low as 35 hours per week or 6 hours per day as the best working-hour figure, which would put people considerably below an eight-hour workday. This, of course, depends on the nature of work. Two of the world’s most productive countries, Norway and Denmark, both have workweeks that are less than 40 hours.
Even the most efficient workers aren’t always slaving away at company business; after all, workers require breaks from their desk jobs. On average, people only feel productive for almost half of the workday, according to a poll of nearly 2,000 UK workers. They could be more inclined to increase that window if it were shorter. Employees could get more done in less time if they worked fewer hours instead of eight hours of work and leisure.
With a better work-life balance and shorter workdays, employee morale and physical health could improve, leading to increased production. In a two-year trial, nurses at a Swedish assisted-living facility worked six hours instead of eight. The nurses were able to plan 85 percent more activities with the residents because they were happier workers who took significantly fewer sick days.
If a compressed schedule leads to more output, then it stands to reason, argues Grant. He says it helps with prioritization. When time is limited, priorities shift to reflect what’s truly important. There may be fewer pointless meetings and less busywork assigned by management as a result of that.
Employees may be more motivated to get things done well and efficiently if their workdays are shorter rather than stretched out across eight hours.
This might lead to a rise in productivity and a fall in error rates among many employees. A shorter weekday is more likely to be a workday, rather than work and a whole bunch of other things that are on my mind, says Grant, speaking in a society where everyone might be distracted by a wide variety of priorities. “I would also anticipate that a shorter workweek would decrease errors if one considers healthcare facilities, individuals engaged in software engineering or accounting, for instance, whose focus is on detail.”
Although there are certainly advantages to a shorter workday, Grant cautions that this does not rule out the possibility of problems.
He starts by saying that not all employees, particularly those with lower levels of dedication, will be able to maintain their current level of productivity even with a shorter workday. He continues by saying, “That’s a failure of management” if employees do avoid responsibility. Someone messed up with hiring, job design, or leadership if they didn’t believe their employees could be just as productive with somewhat less effort.
According to Headlee, a shorter weekday could make things more complicated for international organizations in certain industries. This is because a shorter workday could reduce the overlap between different time zones. Furthermore, businesses may incur additional expenses; for example, the Swedish study found that the institution had to recruit additional nurses to compensate for the reduced hours. (It should be mentioned that businesses in industries that operate around the clock, like healthcare, have various personnel requirements; therefore, firms that rely on knowledge-work may see their prices affected differently.)
But the biggest risk is that, just as with eight-hour days, workers will find ways to get more done outside of normal business hours, meaning that reducing the workday won’t really increase productivity. Headlee essentially implies that, unlike in many jobs, employers should verify that employees aren’t putting in extra hours before letting them off early.
Imagined or actualized?
Shorter workweeks may not be as far off as they formerly were, notwithstanding certain drawbacks. Some companies are reevaluating and even questioning the current state of affairs in the workplace as a result of the pandemic. Many businesses have begun to embrace new ways of working, such as remote work or asynchronous communication, even if they may not be able to measure productivity in the same ways.
Some people just can’t handle a four-day workweek. Therefore, shorter workdays can be an “easier sell” for businesses that are hesitant to close for a whole additional day each week.
The adoption of a four-day workweek has also been a noteworthy change; although it is still in its early stages and is being tested out by various nations and businesses, the idea is gaining traction as a means to reevaluate how people work in this new reality. On the other hand, not everyone can handle a four-day workweek. Accordingly, shorter workdays may be an “easier sell” for enterprises that are hesitant to close for an entire extra day each week, say Grant.
Grant chimes in to say that working parents are one demographic that would definitely gain greatly from a shorter workweek. “The chaos that wreaks for parents who are trying to manage childcare is not to be understated,” he says, expressing his disapproval of the fact that, in many parts of the globe, the workday ends two hours after school. “It’s a huge opportunity to try to create better alignment there,” the author says of one of the most difficult and stressful work-life experiences people go through.
The number of businesses that perceive the practicality of a reduced workweek is an open question. However, Grant does say that there may be an instant reward for those who take the step. He is of the opinion that both employees and employers will immediately gain from a shortened workweek.
“Most people who are given the chance to work a shorter day are going to take that as a tremendous benefit,” says he. They will be eternally thankful. More loyalty will be fostered. After that, they become even more motivated. They will make the most of the time they have by working harder and smarter.
